


A Strange Labyrinth

by SophaSoph



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: F/M, Human AU, Labyrinth AU, canon AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 14:56:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4791521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophaSoph/pseuds/SophaSoph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marianne comes home late and exhausted from fencing lessons. But the blaring sounds of synthesizers and glam rock from  Jim Henson's 'Labyrinth' have a completely different idea for her evening. A blow out ensues between Dawn and Marianne, bringing forth the imposing presence of a larger than life Bog King and his hoard of goblins. Marianne and Sunny are soon left to face down the dangers of the Hinder Forest and all it's deep dark troubles with the help of some of its most important denizens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Strange Labyrinth

            Practice was absolute murder. Since Marianne had been moved up a level in her fencing classes she no longer had a chance to pin Roland to the floor with her saber. It meant she actually had to spar with partners that practiced and knew how to fence. It was fun, yeah, infinitely more interesting, but Marianne was beat and sweaty and tired and she still had a report to write and two lectures to watch and make notes for before she could call it a night. The one word that kept coming to mind was ‘No’.  She managed to catch a lift on the elevator with a pizza delivery person; they kept graciously quiet the whole ride to the fifth floor apartments where Marianne lived with her sister, Dawn. Marianne found herself unlocking the door to the very apartment destined for pizza that night. When the bag opened and Dawn appeared with the tip, Marianne tried not to gag. It was Sunny and Dawn’s favorite pizza, chicken margharita thin crust with alfredo sauce. It just wasn’t right, Marianne thought. Pizza should never be disgraced like this monstrosity of ‘healthy’ foods.

 

            Marianne dropped her things in the kitchen. Fixed a snack and sat down with her laptop to do the last thing she ever wanted to do in this world, homework. The lectures were dry. Despite the mashup of video with powerpoint slides to highlight study topics, there’s just no saving a lecture if it was boring to start with. From across the apartment came a rowdy remastering of David Bowie’s _Underground_.

 

“Not again,” Marianne ground her teeth as she mumbled out her protest.

            This was the third time this week. Sure, Marianne loved the movie _Labyrinth_ , she’d loved it since she was a kid, but she didn’t love it when her sister and accomplice best friend played the movie and acted out every-god-damn-scene. Marianne turned up the volume on her laptop to keep the distractions out. It worked until the baby started crying. She couldn’t stand it. The squealing from the other side of the apartment was torture, Dawn acting out Sarah’s part as Sunny sufferingly kept pace (he didn’t get _Labyrinth_ and this scene was his least favorite), added to the raucous noise.

 

“Could you, I dunno, not?” Marianne hollered over to Dawn. It was blunt and maybe rude to her performance art major of a younger sister, but someone had to say something.

 

“I’m doing this for class,” Dawn said matter-of-fact. “I have to perform a monologue tomorrow for midterms!”

 

“Then skip to the monologue, or pace around your room and recite it! You don’t have to torture the rest of us for an hour and half just for one stupid monologue!”

            Marianne didn’t like the feeling of guilt rising in her throat, so she quickly added, “Besides, it’s not like any of us don’t know this movie by heart.”

 

“Marianne, it’s a monologue not a summary. Do you even know the difference?”  Dawn had picked up on Marianne’s sour mood apparently. Or maybe she was as exhausted as her sister, in which case this could only end in a fight. Marianne weighed her consequences before answering her sister.

 

“I may be a hospitality major, but I still know what a monologue is, Dawn.” She caught herself adding in a hint of venom to her tone and immediately regretted it.

“Fine then! If you know so much, why don’t you do my monologue for me?” Dawn was in the door of the kitchen leaning angrily on its frame with her arms crossed over her chest.

 

“You aren’t the only one with midterms tomorrow Dawn, in case you forgot, I’m graduating next semester.” She wasn’t going to pull the seniority thing on her sister, Marianne thought to herself, not tonight.

 

“Jesus, Marianne, what happened at practice tonight?” Dawn feigned a convincing look of concern for her sister.

            Marianne gave Dawn a confused look.

 

“Your head’s super swollen.” Dawn glared down at Marianne. Seeing she made her point, she offered a truce. “Come do your homework in the living room, you can ignore us from there. It won’t take all night, I just have to run through the lines.”

            Marianne gave her sister a disapproving look, this never worked out that easy. They always derailed when they tried to study in the same room as eachother.

 

“Oh, come on, you need human interaction as much as Sarah.” Dawn pulled her sister out of her seat and dragged her towards the living room.

 

“Fine, but if I get an ‘F’ at midterms it’s on your head.” Marianne scooped up her laptop and notebook following Dawn out into the living room.

 

“Like you ever got an ‘F’ on anything,” Dawn smiled.

 

‘My transcript would give you a heart attack.’ Marianne thought as she let Dawn guide her to the sofa.

 

“We have to restart the scene because somebody interrupted,” Dawn informed her sister as Sunny rewound the VHS. Call it sentimental, but this wasn’t the only childhood movie they had on cassette.

            From the TV, Toby Froud started screaming again with all the strength of his little baby lungs and Jennifer Connelly came into scene screaming back. Dawn missed her queue and they had to rewind again. They went through this process one more time and then Marianne started acting out the scene with a comedic amount of over-dramatization. Sunny had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing. Dawn caught her sister in the middle of swooning about how hard her life is taking care of a bratty baby and a wicked stepmother.

 

“Marianne? Would you like to take the stage?” Dawn offered taking a slice of pizza from the coffee table.

 

            Marianne slouched, “I didn’t mean to-“

“No, no, this is good! I needed a break anyway.” Dawn took a seat next to Sunny, cuddling up to his side.

 

“Okay,” Marianne trailed off, deciding to straighten up and act out the scene properly. Sunny rewound the tape again.

 

            Sarah rushed into the scene collecting her wayward ‘Sir Lancelot’. Marianne screamed in unison with Sarah at the wailing baby on screen, it helped ease out some of the tension in her system. Unfortunately, the act was a bit too convincing for some. Then the goblins in their nest started to wake up and watch as Sarah and Marianne vented on tiny crying Toby.

 

“Goblin King! Goblin King, wherever you may be! Take this child of mine far away from me!” Marianne was shaking her fists, Sarah was offering up her baby brother to the ceiling. Dawn looked shaken. Sunny had put a comforting arm around her shoulders, but she didn’t seem to notice.

            _-Oh! That’s not it, where did she learn that rubbish? It didn’t even start with ‘I wish’-_

“I wish, I wish-“ Sarah put her brother to bed, Marianne rolled her shoulders back. “I wish the goblins would take you away—right now.”

            The scene ended, Dawn got up and went to the bathroom without a word. Marianne watched after her, concern creeping up her back.

 

“What did I do?” She asked Sunny. He had hopped off the couch and followed Dawn’s trail as far as the hallway, Marianne stood next to him. Sunny shrugged lamely. “How much coffee has she had tonight?”

 

            Sunny was about to answer when the toilet flushed and their attention went back to the bathroom at the end of the hall. They waited, but Dawn never emerged. Marianne came up and knocked on the door, but it was silent.

 

“Dawn? Are you alright?” Marianne tried the door, it wasn’t locked, but it wouldn’t move either. “Dawn? Did I do something wrong?—Dawn!”

 

            Marianne put her weight against the door and got it to swing open. The bathroom was dark; the light switch did nothing, no matter how many times Marianne flipped it. She checked every hiding place in their tiny bathroom, but her sister was nowhere to be found. Not even under the sink in the cramped cupboard that hardly fit their tampons and toilet paper at once, much less a full grown woman. Marianne was working herself into a panic when Sunny yelped from the living room. Not the kind of yelp you make when you stub your toe either, a full cry for help stifled too early to become a word-kind of yelp. Marianne ran the five steps down the hall and crashed into the living room. The first thing she saw was Sunny underneath a pile of four or five slick looking frogs, each easily about three to four feet tall with front facing eyes. Something was growling in the room and it might have been the freaky amphibians, but it shook the floor. From the darkened kitchen a loud repetitive metallic ‘thunk’ walked into the dim living room. The TV had turned to static and the lamp was knocked over, making Marianne guess at the features of the nightmare walking out of her kitchen. 

 

            Sharp, chitinous features reflected the filtered streetlight outside the window. Large pointed shoulders, pointed ears, a skull-like crone’s head covered in layers of razor edges, everything about this monster was sharp and pointed and rumbled aggressively. That was the sound, the scales on the monster’s shoulders were rumbling out an ominous thrum, but it wasn’t deep enough to shake the floor, which continued to shiver underneath her stocking feet. Marianne and Sunny watched in horror as it moved closer to them. A foot, or at least, it looked like a foot, the big toe was attached near the arch of the foot like the opposable toe on a chimp, the leg running up from it was long and bent back at the knee unnaturally, sharp barbs sprung out from the ankle up to the knee above which the features were layered in sleek bark-like chitin. It looked like an exoskeleton. Layer upon layer of chitin, sliding and slipping into place as the monster advanced into the skewed light of the fallen lamp.

            Marianne could smell the damp earth musk that clung to its carapace before she remembered her fencing gear tossed at the end of the sofa. She lunged for it, gripping the hilt of her saber before four large rasping claws clamped down on her shoulders pushing her into the sweaty duffel before holding her up to face the creature that had just made its entrance.

            It had been hunched over before and now stood to its fullest height, at least nearly seven feet tall. It appeared more like a skeleton of chitin than one with flesh.

 

“Where’s my sister?” Marianne hissed seething with indignation, her saber wrenched out of her grasp.

 

“She was sent for.” The creature replied in a foreign brogue.

            Sunny flinched from underneath his smothering pile of frogs. Even if he could speak, it might not have been more than a cry.

 

“Bring. Her. Back” Marianne demanded.

 

“You ask a lot Princess.” Half the nightmare’s features were still in shadow, but when it’s boney jaw split into a displeased grimace, Marianne could count every one of its sharp wicked teeth.

 

“Maybe you didn’t hear me? Give me back. My sister.” She said slow and clearly for the bogeyman-creature as she tested the strength of the things holding her back.

 

“A wish, once granted, can nae be reversed suh easily. Would ye not rather cherish the time ye have now all to yerself?” The bogeyman thing leveled its self with Marianne, its eyes were evenly spaced, but wide and wild, she could see white all around the irises. Marianne would have lied if she said it didn’t terrify her. 

 

            Unbidden, a vision of studying in peace and passing her midterms with ease breezed into her mind, but the quiet of the scene was eerie and out of place without Dawn’s warm presence. It was downright empty, quiet, and lonely.

 

            Marianne focused on the bogeyman’s deep set eyes and pulled against her detainers. The monster flinched. The light caught on a very tall pole in its grasp. A staff with a web of vines holding a large chunk of amber headed the bronze weapon, when it fell back into the shadows Marianne’s mind cleared completely. She practically snarled in frustration.

 

“I wish for my sister back.” She nearly growled, voice low with anger.

 

The damned thing had the nerve to snicker.

 

“I nae can do that Princess.” It leaned in again, a lingering smirk curling across a full lower lip. “Ye have to prove t’me and to my goblins that ye want yer sister back. After they carried the wee beasty all the way to my castle in the Hinder Forest, they may need a little incentive to be letting her go again.”

 

            Marianne ripped free from her detainers and landed a solid fist into the cheek of the boney villains face. It might have done more damage to her knuckles than it did to the creature’s jaw, but she was still rewarded with a satisfying popping sound. It straightens up in surprise, rubbing a now sore cheek. Marianne is pressed to the floor again with twice as many goblins as before.

 

            The monster stepped aside, revealing a large bay window that Marianne was sure had never been a feature of her and Dawn’s apartment.  She glanced at Sunny, his eyes were wide and flashed from Marianne to the monster in her living room to the new window. From what she could see pressed to the floor, outside the window it was nearly sunrise, but you could hardly tell for the trees and foliage blocking out the horizon. The floor was positively quaking, like it was trying to beat a hasty retreat without them.

 

“You’ve convinced me to offer ye a chance at fetching yer sister back,” Growled the monster moving toward the window. It motioned for Marianne and Sunny to be let up. They were herded toward the window. “This,” it motioned to the trees. “Is the Hinder Forest. Ye have thirteen hours to reach my castle and retrieve yer sister, or else be sentenced to wander its woods fer the rest of your nat’ral lives.”

 

            Marianne looked around, the forest was vast and thickly wooded, not a sound escaped it. Sunny nudged Marianne’s arm. “Marianne,” he whispered. “The apartment disappeared.”

 

            He was right. The apartment was nowhere to be seen, the ground was solid, but the thrumming had continued. Marianne looked around again. The monster before her had two pair of long insect wings twitching from behind its back. She met its eyes again. She finally made a distinct connection.

 

“Are you _the_ goblin king?” Marianne glared at the monster.

 

“Nae, I am the _Bog King._ ” He announced beating his chest proudly. A small cloud of dust falling from his exoskeleton. Marianne and Sunny exchanged glances, but tried not to laugh.

 

“What’s your name?” Marianne asked, crossing her arms.

 

            The Bog King tripped up. “It’s—Bog.” His wings picked up pace, lifting him into the air. The goblins rushed into the forest, Marianne’s saber left discarded by its wooded edge.

 “Thirteen hours, Tough-girl, else your sister, her friend and you become mine, forever.” The Bog King said in departing flying deeper and deeper into the forest.

 

            Marianne picked up her saber and tucked it into the waistband of her sweatpants. She looked to see if Sunny was going to follow her.

 

“I guess that makes you Sarah.” He said before climbing into the brush after her.

 

“Why did you have to say it out loud?” Marianne whimpered.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I fully accept the fact that I cannot write anything shorter than a small novel. This is my life and these are my choices. 
> 
> Bog you fucking nerd. As soon as she punched you, you were gone.


End file.
